Throughout the continuum of British electronic street music (rave, jungle, UK garage, and now grime) most attention has been focused on London. This is especially true with today's grime scene, where at times it is hard to pull your eyes off what's happening in East London (which is, admittedly, home to Dizzee Rascal, Roll Deep, Nasty Crew, Ruff Sqwad, Newham Generals, Jammek the World, plus about a billion others) to realize that there's a lot going more

Based around a caps and hoody lairy-tale, 'The Work Related Illness' certainly has a narrative but don't worry about it being a clumsy device that'll get in the way of the tunes; it doesn't. Made up of 3 MC's and 1 DJ, Virus Syndicate's trump card is their producer Mark One whose music effortlessly shifts from the truly apocalyptic (the opening 'Slow Down') through to dusted, bleached beats and lazy scratching ('Get Money'). On top of the storming more

This is an easy review. I could end it right now by saying that if you are into rough hip hop and you are dead tired of the Hollywood people (Eminem, Snoop Dog, etc) Virus Syndicate is the altenative you have to check. It would be too easy to say that even my wife, that don't know what the hell the word "grime" means, dug THE WORK RELATED ILLNESS immediately! The fact is that each track has got a different arrangement and if "Slow down" is based on more